E 649 
. R87 

Copy 1 


SPEECH- 

OF 



DELIVERED ON THE 21ST OCTOBER, 1864, 


AT THE 


ANNUAL MEETING 


OF THE 



HELD IN 

MONTREAL, CANADA. 



Puntat: 

PRINTED BY JOHN LOVELL, ST. NICHOLAS STREET. 

1864. 









SPEECH. 


Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, 

I did not come to this meeting with the expectation of making 
a speech, consequently I am quite unprepared. But the object 
for which we are assembled is one so near and dear to my heart, 
that I feel constrained to say a few words upon the great subject 
before us. My views upon the subject of slavery are by many 
people considered ultra, but I have been an eye-witness to the 
cruelty, injustice, and barbarity of that vile and atrocious institution, 
human slavery; and with your permission, Mr. President, I will 
make a few remarks upon what I have seen and know from actual 
experience of the working and results of slavery in the Southern 
States. 

During the winter of 1859,1 made an extended journey through 
the Slave States, visiting every city and village of any importance 
in those States, besides visiting many plantations in the interior 
and along the Alabama, Tombigbee, and Black Warrior rivers. 
My journey commenced immediately after the invasion of Harper's 
Ferry,— a village on the borders of Virginia and Maryland,—by that 
noble old pioneer in the cause of freedom, John Brown, and his 
little band of brave freemen. I left Washington on the day that 
Virginia judicially murdered John Brown, and arrived in New 
Orleans early in the spring of 1860. I found the Slave States 
in a condition of great excitement; and a feeling of dread and 
insecurity prevailed throughout the entire South, even in the most 
remote districts. You will naturally ask the cause of this excite¬ 
ment, this feeling of insecurity and dread. They were at that time 



4 


living under the protection of a government intensely pro-slavery; 
they were in the enjoyment of all their State rights : the cause of 
this dread and insecurity in the minds of slaveholders was pro¬ 
duced by the sudden darting of a ray of light from Harper’s 
Ferry,—a ray of light that penetrated the pending gloom and 
ignorance which hung like a cloud over the darkened minds of 
4,000,000 enslaved human beings. John Brown had stricken a blow 
on the confines of slavery, the echoes of which resounded on every 
plantation, and entered the humble cabin of the poor slave as well 
as the mansion of the proud and haughty slaveholder, and roused 
the long-deferred hope in the bosom of millions of poor downtrodden 
and long-suffering slaves that the hour of their deliverance from 
a cruel tyranny was at hand; and prayers ascended from a 
thousand rude cabins to the Almighty Father for freedom, justice, 
and liberty. Is it a matter of surprise that a feeling of dread and 
insecurity was felt in the mansion of the proud and haughty master, 
when a million earnest prayers were going up to the throne of God 
for justice and freedom ? 

It is not unusual to hear the tales of cruelty and oppression 
toward this unfortunate people spoken of as a fiction; and that 
interesting work of Mrs. Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) has been 
declared by slaveholders and Northern sympathisers with slavery, 
as entirely imaginary and unworthy of belief. 

Mr. President, I have diligently read that and other kindred 
works, and assure you I have witnessed scenes of oppression, 
cruelty, and brutality towards that inoffensive people in the Slave 
States, far exceeding anything described in works of the kind 
mentioned. 

Slavery is demoralizing in its tendencies to the white as well as to 
the black, to the master as well as to the slave. Where it exists, it 
brutalizes and renders the white domineering, despotic and brutal. 
The black race is kept in a condition of the grossest ignorance, and 
the circulation of knowledge is guarded with a jealous eye, with a 


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view to prevent the slave from gaining information. The discussion 
of subjects which would be likely to reach the darkened but alert 
mind of the colored people, is sternly prohibited. For fifty years 
past, the government of the United States has been under the con¬ 
trol of Southern men, and they have always endeavored to extend 
their domineering tyranny over the entire North ; and until within 
the past twenty-five years, there were few prominent men in the 
North with sufficient moral courage to face the proud and over¬ 
bearing dictation of the slave lords in the Senate and Congress. 
The venerable John Quincey Adams, and that noble veteran and 
apostle of freedom, the late Joshua R. Giddings, U. S. Consul- 
General to Canada, took a firm and decided stand twenty-five years 
ago for freedom, and bravely asserted that all men, black and white, 
had the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; 
and for many years these two noble men withstood a united Senate 
and House of Congress, and the cowardly and assassinlike threats 
and abuse of the slave-drivers of the South. The lamp lighted by 
John Quincey Adams and Joshua R. Giddings continued to burn 
with increased brilliancy year after year, and in many of the free 
States, societies were formed to promote the abolition of Slavery by 
the dissemination of information throughout the North, describing 
the actual condition of the poor downtrodden slave, and awakening 
a warm interest in behalf of this oppressed people. The leaders 
in this movement had to withstand the most vindictive persecution 
at the hands of Southern men and sympathisers with slavery 
in the North. Prominent upon the roll of men who have rendered 
their names immortal by the advocacy of liberal doctrines may be 
mentioned the names of William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, 
Gerritt Smith, Horace Greeley, and Charles Sumner of the U. S. 
Senate, and hundreds of other worthy men and women labored with 
great zeal and much sacrifice to bring about the abolition of human 
slavery in the United States. The slaveholders used every influ- 
ence in their power to prevent discussions upon the subject of 


L of C. 


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slavery, and when they failed to meet the arguments of reason, 
they assumed the domineering and despotic attitude of the slave- 
driver, and attempted, by acts of cowardly brutality, to stifle dis¬ 
cussion with the bowie-knife, pistol and bludgeon. The late Mr. 
Giddings, when a member of Congress, and while addressing the 
House upon the Rights of Man, was threatened with instant death 
if he uttered another word upon the subject; but the noble and 
brave old statesman well knew the cowardly character of slave¬ 
holders, and continued to speak upon the subject in defiance of the 
cowardly threat. And more recently the Hon. Charles Sumner was 
attacked while seated at his desk in the Senate Chamber and nearly 
assassinated by a Southern member of Congress, while another 
Southerner stood over the victim of this brutal outrage with a 
cocked pistol, to prevent the bystanders from rendering aid to 
Mr. Sumner while his Southern confrere brutally assaulted an 
unarmed man. This outrage upon Mr. Sumner was committed 
because his arguments, proving the “ Barbarism of Slavery,” were 
unanswerable. In this manner the South has endeavored to control 
the nation, and extend and perpetuate the blighting curse of sla¬ 
very, by planting it in the Western Territories ; and when they 
found they could no longer brow-beat and force the liberty-loving 
people of the North into acquiescence with their barbarous designs, 
they rebelled, and are now endeavoring to establish a government 
founded upon human slavery, which is to be the chief corner-stone 
of their new edifice. A celebrated statesman in England has 
declared in reference to the war in the United States, that “ the 
North is fighting for empire, and the South for independence.” 
This is a fallacy—the great struggle now being waged in the United 
States is a continuance of the contest between freedom and slavery 
that began thirty-five years ago in Congress—and thank God the 
indications are, that slavery will go down beneath the blows of the 
freemen of the North. It is unnecessary for me to occupy your 
attention any longer to prove the barbarity and demoralizing result 


7 


/ r# 


of slavery. Most of you have doubtless seen the photographs of the 
slave children from New Orleans: the mother of these sweet inno¬ 
cent children was a slave, and the children of a slave mother fol¬ 
low her condition,—and these innocent children, as white as any 
Anglo-Saxon child, were destined for the slave market. This is not 
by any means an isolated case, but cf frequent and daily occur¬ 
rence in the Slave States. What do you think of a father selling 
his own child, and that child a sweet innocent girl, as white, if not 
whiter than himself, and for the basest, vilest and most loathsome 
purpose imaginable ? Thank God, the lamp of liberty burns and 
will continue to burn, until we no longer hear the sighs and groans 
of an oppressed and cruelly outraged people. I believe the great 
principle of human freedom involved in this contest will ultimately 
triumph: it may be the purpose of a just God to punish still more 
the people of the North, because of their complicity with the South 
in binding the chains of slavery upon the colored people. But out 
of this great contest will arise the august form of Liberty, demand¬ 
ing that all men—black and white—shall have an equal right to 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

It is the custom in this country and in England to find fault with 
the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, because 
he has not done more towards liberating the slaves, and especially 
because he failed to declare every slave in the Union free when 
he issued the emancipation proclamation. I believe Mr. Lincoln 
has done all he could do constitutionally toward emancipation, and 
has always kept pace with the public opinion of the country; he 
may have seemed slow and over-cautious at times, but he has seemed 
to me to have done what he has after grave deliberation and much 
thought and anxiety. In issuing his emancipation proclamation he 
acted in his capacity of Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the 
United States ; and certainly he had no power to interfere with the 
local institutions of a State like Kentucky, not in actual rebellion, 
and as President he clearly had no power. The Government of the 


8 


United States has done very much during the past two years 
towards giving liberty to the slave, and I find from public docu¬ 
ments that over one million of slaves have been liberated, and the 
good work of emancipation goes bravely on. I feel that President 
Lincoln should have the approbation and assistance of every Chris¬ 
tian man, for his noble, firm purpose to crush slavery forever; and 
that God will help him and sustain him should be the earnest wish 
of every true man. library of congress 

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library of congress 



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